The BlackBerry Passport will go on sale Wednesday at $599 unlocked in the USA

There is nothing better than getting price and release date information straight from the people at charge. And this happens to be the case with the upcoming BlackBerry Passport! Company CEO John Chen revealed that the wildly square smartphone with a QWERTY keyboard will go on sale this Wednesday, priced at a fair (and square!) $599 unlocked, without subsidies in the USA.

Chen assures us that BlackBerry is being generous, as flagship models from other smartphone manufacturers are positioned in the $700 range. However, the company wants to "try to get the market interested", so it's going to "start a little lower than that". Well, we can easily imagine consumers paying $50 more for an unlocked Apple iPhone 6 or Samsung Galaxy S5, but that's up to anybody to decide.

The BlackBerry Passport is an interesting device, no doubt. It differentiates itself with a 4.5-inch square screen with the resolution of 1440 x 1440 pixels and a superb pixel density of 453ppi. It's also powered by a reasonably fast Snapdragon 800 quad-core processor clocked at 2.2GHz, along with a steady 3GB of RAM and 32GB of built-in storage. It has a 13-megapixel main camera and a 2MP selfie snapper. The battery capacity is also one of the best around - 3450mAh.

That's plenty of good hardware for the money. But can the quirky Passport appeal to mainstream customers and business professionals alike? Analysts such as IDC Malaysia's Daniel Pang seem to share our preliminary opinion of the Passport - a "good phone, but it will never really hit the mainstream as a premium offering". John Chen and company acknowledge this possibility, with the CEO saying that the phone is designed for users who "need to be productive on their phones, such as those working in the medical field". According to him, the Passport lets users view more characters on a single line than on typical rectangular smartphones like the iPhone.

Regardless of its market fate, the Passport marks a bold return for BlackBerry, and showcases John Chen's patience and focus in his mission to turn around the company. The Passport will be followed by the BlackBerry Classic in December, which is aimed towards fans of the distinctive design and keyboard designed for quick communication.

I have long since grown bored with your uninformed diatribe about BlackBerry, and truly could care less about what you think about me or BlackBerry, or who you THINK I may be. Your tired rhetoric isn't going to break BlackBerry.

Incidentally, I find it ironic that one who constantly trolls BlackBerry and has just trolled ME in the process would attempt to call me a troll.

Manti hates BlackBerry for no logical reason at all. His only reason for hating them is for hates sake.

You hate Apple and Microsoft for what? What has either of these companies personally done to you for you to have a LOGICAL reason for hating them? The same question can be posed to Manti. What has BlackBerry PERSONALLY done to him for him to hate them so much that every time he posts on a BlackBerry article, all he says is "just die BlackBerry"? There is no logical reason. These companies have not wronged you or him personally.

If you love the design of the Passport so much, why not buy one? I ,certainly am...

I am free here to express my opinion ... At $599 this will be another epic fail.

They dont have a Good Enough App Store, Not easy to use functions, very poor perception, etc. Ideal price to actually make any impact especially considering its notorious impression is $299. Someone should do market survey before actually pricing this thing. With the company going down - DO NOT MAKE STUFFS THAT NOBODY BUYS.

Moreover, people are rejecting to buy BB products. With a marketshare close to 0% clearly means people dont want blackberry anymore.

Palm gave up when they had much larger market share than the current BB.
Nokia was the world second largest phone manufacturer and they sold their devices and services department to Microsoft.

These companies gave up because they knew very well they will not success. But, BB still insisting to be successful in phone bussiness despite of all indications of its massive overwhelming failure from every aspect of hardware bussiness.

This is EXACTLY what happened to WahyWishnu. Always knew he had multiple accounts.

As always, you can't see the forest for the trees. You keep thinking that BlackBerry is only selling to the CONSUMER market like Android and iOS. BlackBerry's main audience is the ENTERPRISE MARKET. Nobody has a higher market share in mobile enterprise than BlackBerry. That's a FACT. Not some BS made up because I don't like something. There app store is geared towards enterprise. They have the deal with Amazon to take care of consumer apps. Also, with BlackBerry 10 handsets able to download and run 98% of all Android apps, they have the "app thing" well in hand.

This Passport is a breath of fresh air in this sea of "me too" handsets that exist today. The consumer knows it. The media knows it. Enterprise has always known it. That's why the interest in the Passport is so high. Another FACT I've just thrown at you. At $599, it's priced lower than today's flagships. It's priced competitively and it's priced to sell.

Here's another fact for you, and it shows me that you really have NO IDEA what you're talking about when it comes to smartphones:

NOKIA WAS THE WORLDS LARGEST PHONE MANUFACTURER, NOT SECOND LARGEST. Go ahead and do some actual research on that FACT and you'll see I'm right and you're wrong.

What happened to Palm and Nokia was tragic. You, no doubt, probably cheered it on. But Palm and Nokia didn't have the 2 major things that BlackBerry has going for it. JOHN CHEN and their expertise in SECURITY. The latter is why 16 out of 20 G20 governments choose BlackBerry, even today. It's why 10 out of 10 of the largest oil, gas and law firms choose BlackBerry....the LARGEST in the WORLD. It's why regulated industries still choose BlackBerry. John Chen has come aboard and righted the ship that is BlackBerry.

BlackBerry is due to release their next earnings report this Friday. I GUARANTEE YOU that it will be better than the last, and the last was good. And when that happens....when they release a progressively better earnings report than the last, I bet you'll still be here, preaching doom and gloom for BlackBerry.

What I said still holds true, and it's why you don't really have an answer to my question. Having an OPINION is one thing, and you're welcome to it. Hating something just because you can is something altogether different.

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